Putting IPM into practice

January 06, 2009

Integrated pest management (IPM) will become a legal obligation for European Union countries over the next six years, but ensuring theoretical knowledge is put into practical use is a complicated issue.

To better understand the farmer training programmes currently used across Europe - and to learn some lessons from further afield - ENDURE commissioned a study from Dr Janice Jiggins, a recognised expert in this sphere from Wageningen University, The Netherlands.

The scope of the study was wide, including both occupational training and education and took a broad view of what could be termed IPM. Although principally focused on Europe, it took in some key approaches used elsewhere in the world and in particular highlighted those that have taken a participatory, experiential learning approach (where farmers are actively involved in seeing, doing and taking part in the process rather than sitting in a classroom). The conclusions are designed to provide guidance to researchers, educators and policy makers on the positive experiences that could be further developed or applied, as well as identifying gaps and further work to be done.

Diversity in all its forms

An initial internet search on IPM courses revealed the sheer diversity of crop protection training and education that is available. This diversity is notable not only between countries and farming systems, but also in the balance of public and private provision, says Jiggins. The range stretches from countries where training is largely delivered or contracted by farmers’ own organisations, such as Denmark, to countries in which public providers still play a large role, such as France, and those which have opened up to a large degree to private providers, such as the UK.

American university courses dominate the IPM web pages, she reports, and refresher courses for occupational users of pest control chemicals are also prevalent. She notes that these include regularly updated information on techniques, equipment, regulations and product information as well as best practice IPM tips. “Crop protection companies are actively involved in organising, delivering or participating in such courses,” she notes. In addition, she says, many on-line short duration and specialist IPM courses exist, including educational material for schools, advice for golf course managers and other specialists and on the use of IPM in the home garden.

The IPM methods and techniques included in the above courses are highly diverse, she adds, ranging from fully organic through to biocontrol in orchards and greenhouses, and conventional industrial best practices in broad acre cropping.

She says the role of the farmer as an informed decision maker does not emerge very clearly in the sites she has examined and growers seeking information on specific field-based learning approaches would probably need some prior familiarity with the relevant literature or with the organisations promoting these approaches (such as the Pesticide Action Network and the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO)).

Participatory training is well established in central and eastern Europe. Here Hungarian farmers evaluate control practices against the weed Ambrosia. Copyright: Szent Istvan University, Hungary.

Jiggins adds that many of the sites covering participatory approaches for farmers are related to international development assistance programmes and a number of sites deal with how producers and agro-enterprises in developing countries can meet European maximum residue levels in fresh produce grown for export. “Company-supplied information and training materials appear to be especially well developed under this head,” she states, pointing, for example, to Crop Life International’s
AgLearn site.

A closer look at Europe

Jiggins took a closer look at four ‘typical’ kinds of provision in Europe: a university-based course for professionals (Netherlands), a university-based Masters level course (Germany), the extensive training support still provided by public agencies in France and an extension-led approach in Portugal.

Drawing on the University of Bonn’s
Plant Pathology Internet Guidebook, she notes that Germany and the UK are dominant in terms of the number and diversity of scientific university courses on topics that underpin IPM practices. She notes also that it is possible to find at least one professionally or academically accredited course relevant to IPM at one or more universities in most European countries. However, she adds, relatively few university programmes are specifically labelled as IPM courses. “The emphasis is on the underlying science rather than on putting the science to work in farmers’ practice,” she says.

She examined two courses at university centres in particular: one at Wageningen International (Netherlands) the other at the Institute of Plant Disease and Plant Protection at the University of Hanover (Germany). “It is noteworthy that both seek to attract international students and both programmes are concerned with export-oriented cropping, and hence with IPM as a means of meeting consumer expectations and regulatory requirements,” she notes.

She paid particular attention to France because of its extensive training provision, which she believes provides an insight into what may be missing in current European coverage. Technical training in France is offered through short courses via the national public network of 10 technical institutes and centres for agriculture (ICTA), which is supported by a professional association (ACTA), responsible for coordinating the training contributions of these centres and institutes. However, she notes, the focus of ICTA courses in general “appears to be on (largely chemical-based) crop protection rather than pest management.” She notes that France also has a specialist centre for organic farming, the Technical Institute for Biological Agriculture in Rennes, which provides both long and short-term training.

A different approach has been taken in Portugal, where extension services led an IPM training programme that rapidly took off following changes to the EU Common Agricultural Policy reforms in 1994. Farmers sign a contract pledging to follow IPM practices for at least five years and in return receive a per acre subsidy partly funded by the EU. By 1999, more than 8,500 farmers had attended at least the minimum 35-hour IPM training course. This training includes classroom sessions on a standard set of rigorously defined IPM techniques, plus field demonstrations and individual and group sessions at a farm level, supported by written and visual materials.

Despite some concerns with the Portuguese method (not least the sustainability and ability to replicate a system relying on subsidies), similar programmes have now been adopted in countries including Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Italy and Hungary, notes Jiggins.

Looking further afield

Jiggins further investigated three examples of interactive IPM education programmes for farmers, extension technicians and advisers that she believes may provide useful insights for Europe. These use what she describes as a learning approach based on adult education rather than technology transfer principles. Thus the aim is to develop broad-based understanding rather than simply to introduce alternative technologies or practices or less toxic crop protection chemicals.

In Nicaragua, CABI (Centre for Agricultural Bioscience International) and ENDURE partner Rothamsted Research have worked with the Central Science Laboratory to develop the concept of mobile plant clinics. The aim is to reach areas and farmers who otherwise would not have much contact with professional services through mobile clinics, which travel to fixed sites on a regular schedule.

The clinics are staffed by IPM-trained technicians who provide direct diagnostic assistance to farmers who bring samples of affected plants and insects for identification. Clinics are well stocked with written and visual materials that can help the farmers gathering around to discuss and make their own diagnosis and learn more about their problems. Once a diagnosis has been made, technicians suggest management options farmers can try and give advice on how they can set up and manage a trial of the options in their own fields. They are encouraged to return to report on these results. When a diagnosis cannot be made immediately, samples are sent to laboratories and the results are available on the clinic’s next visit. See the
Global Plant Clinic website for more details.

Push-pull strategies use repellent and deterrent stimuli (push) and attractive and stimulant stimuli (pull) to direct the movement of pests and beneficial insects. In Kenya, a strategy was developed to control maize stem borer for small-scale farmers by the International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology in Nairobi, supported by researchers at Rothamsted. Public extension specialists and IPM facilitators trained under the Farmer Field Schools (FSS) programme (see below) worked with FFS graduates and farmer groups to establish on-farm experimental fields which serve as learning plots. Farmer-to-farmer extension is spreading the strategy widely, though Jiggins notes that the cheap and ready availability of chemical solutions is hindering the process.

Farmer Field Schools for IPM

Jiggins also examines the spread of Farmer Field Schools, originally developed in Indonesia for controlling pesticide-induced outbreaks of brown plant hoppers in irrigated rice. She notes that FFS have spread to all parts of the world, and though the details are different in each country, they share some key characteristics such as being farmer-centred, using experiential learning in groups and are based on adult education principles. The FFS concept was introduced into Europe, with FAO support, to help farmers in central and eastern Europe to understand and apply IPM options for dealing with western corn rootworm (WCR) that spread rapidly in maize-growing areas in the 1990s. She says that where the institutional conditions and the necessary scientific support has been assembled effectively, WCR FFS have taken off, including the development of curricula for other crops and pests and an expanding range of IPM options tested in farmers’ own contexts.

Dr Janice Jiggins is a co-author of the recently published book, Creating Food Futures. Trade, Ethics and Environment,
published in the UK by Gower Publishing Ltd (ISBN 978 0 7546 4907 6, more details at
www.gowerpublishing.com).